Ritual

[RipVanWinkle]

I was thinking about what we exchristians may have lost as a result of our deconversion. Friendship could be one, but one can argue that you can always make new friends if you make the effort. Prayer? That's been discussed here a number of times. I think you can pray to yourself and get the same result. False security? NO thanks. I refuse to kid myself in order to live out a fantasy. Music? Yeah, but you can find alternative music. Good counsel? No way. Ritual? What about ritual?

 

I have come to think that we humans are somehow wired to want rituals in our life. Sound crazy? Well, maybe, but that doesn't mean it's not true, does it? Years ago a good friend of mine said that he used to think ritual in church was a waste, but now he understood. My friend was either an atheist or agnostic, but he still felt this way. 

 

I'm no anthropologist, but doesn't every culture have it? If not every one, surely most do. Why? Well, we know its tied to religion or love of country mostly. It expands the emotions and makes you feel good. You know, when I go to church now, which is not often, I still appreciate some of the ritual, not because I believe what is being said or sung is true, but because it gives me a felling of security. Instantly, it calls to mind when I was a little boy with my Mom and Dad and Brother standing side by side in church.

Happy recollections. And the repeat of those old rituals gives me the feeling that that happiness is still here somehow. Maybe its away of returning to the security of innocence. Just for a while. A return to childhood. It's hard to believe but just writing about it make me tear up and I am not an overly emotional person. What's going on?   bill

[VacuumFlux]

I also like ritual, but do not get a feeling of innocence from it. It's.... well, I guess like when I learned to drive a manual transmission. My body's just so absorbed in the physical that it makes it easier than normal to shut off a lot of the chatter in the mind. Sorta like meditation. With group rituals there's also a strong sense of social bonding, of being part of something bigger than myself. I love choral singing, of getting that many people working together in unity. There's a sense of relief of being able to be in that much of a social setting without having to constantly think about whether you're doing things right other other people are judging you; you just do it (in the ideal situation; I certainly realize that church people often spend the service looking around judgementally).

 

I've been trying to figure out how to be more intentional about the habits/rituals in my life. You know how healthy it's supposed to be to have a regular routine, where you eat and sleep at the same time every day so that your body isn't stressed out by too much change? I've noticed that if I have to change anything about my night time ritual (including things like brushing my teeth) it's hard to sleep because something's just not right. Social rituals have that same sort of secure feeling to me. The feeling of knowing what's going on and everyone's playing my the same rules.

 

I have noticed that people who didn't grow up in church don't get the same sense of familiarity out of it that I do, so even if they like aspects of the service, they don't get the same thing out of it that I do. So I suppose there is some connection to my childhood there. I've also found that I like to read liberal christian blogs sometimes because they "speak my lanugage". The jargon's all very familiar, and I find that comforting. Sometimes I find I feel better about my beliefs (on things like social justice) phrased in christianeze; it's... well, like going home. And realizing that even though I've rejected my immediate family's beliefs, I haven't completely rejected everyone in my tribe/they wouldn't all reject me. That I haven't become entirely Other from the sort of people I grew up with.

[Bhim]

Bill, your thesis doesn't sound crazy to me at all.  As you know I returned to my family's religion after leaving Jesus.  I started doing Hindu pujas again, going to temples, reciting mantras, etc.  And since I have a religious wife, we participate in Hindu rituals even more than I did growing up.  But do I actually believe that there's a god out there listening to my prayers?  For me this is an open question, and so far the strongest answer I can give is "maybe, but probably not."  Now, this obviously wouldn't be an option for someone who grew up evangelical, but the good thing about most non-Christian religions is that intellectual assent to doctrine isn't a requirement.  For example, my wife is well aware of my difficulty believing in Hinduism's supernatural claims, and doesn't really care one way or another.  Indeed, I know of few in my religious community who would (none, actually).

 

Religion is inextricably tied to culture.  For better or worse we've evolved as a species that engages in these social behaviors, and religion probably provides some unseen functions for us.  You might be interested in an article by Richard Dawkins on the subject (http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/124-what-use-is-religion-part-2).  Insofar as my religiosity doesn't lead me to engage in behaviors that violate my common sense, I'm OK with simply partaking of the rituals.

[FreeThinkerNZ]

I was thinking about what we exchristians may have lost as a result of our deconversion. Friendship could be one, but one can argue that you can always make new friends if you make the effort. Prayer? That's been discussed here a number of times. I think you can pray to yourself and get the same result. False security? NO thanks. I refuse to kid myself in order to live out a fantasy. Music? Yeah, but you can find alternative music. Good counsel? No way. Ritual? What about ritual?

 

I have come to think that we humans are somehow wired to want rituals in our life. Sound crazy? Well, maybe, but that doesn't mean it's not true, does it? Years ago a good friend of mine said that he used to think ritual in church was a waste, but now he understood. My friend was either an atheist or agnostic, but he still felt this way. 

 

I'm no anthropologist, but doesn't every culture have it? If not every one, surely most do. Why? Well, we know its tied to religion or love of country mostly. It expands the emotions and makes you feel good. You know, when I go to church now, which is not often, I still appreciate some of the ritual, not because I believe what is being said or sung is true, but because it gives me a felling of security. Instantly, it calls to mind when I was a little boy with my Mom and Dad and Brother standing side by side in church.

Happy recollections. And the repeat of those old rituals gives me the feeling that that happiness is still here somehow. Maybe its away of returning to the security of innocence. Just for a while. A return to childhood. It's hard to believe but just writing about it make me tear up and I am not an overly emotional person. What's going on?   bill

I would rather participate in secular rituals than religious ones.  Remembering people who served in the military and died in wars is one example.  Political participation is another.  There are community/cultural rituals to enjoy, like meeting up for an ale with friends in a pub, a family gathering for a roast dinner etc.  We are pattern-seeking animals.

 

Remembering one's childhood rituals and that feeling of being with family might be a reaction to some stress in your life now.  I have no idea if anything in particular has been happening for you but I know from what I've read here that the deconversion process can take a long time to work through.  I'm 100% convinced that I do not believe in any gods or anything supernatural but I know it may take some time before all the emotional issues are processed fully. 

 

One aspect of deconversion for me was the tension between being free to think for myself but also being totally responsible for myself and my life, as an adult.  Xianity is a form of delayed development, it kept us as children long beyond the point where we  should have grown up and taken responsibility for ourselves.  God was like an eternal parent, watching over us, controlling our every move.  To deconvert is to finally grow up and throw that parent away.  It's understandable if occasionally we feel a bit nostalgic for when things were simpler and easier.  But it's worth the occasional discomfort to be fully free.

[francesco]

I went to bible study once!!!

no more of that things

 

and about praying, why bother praying to ask something?

all knowing all powerful god can be changed by a pray?????

[Thurisaz]

Rituals do give the (whatever) that they are about a rather clear feeling that this is all outside of the everyday routine. Also, group rituals often create and enhance a certain sense of community. Is it crazy to have a thing for rituals? In my book, not at all.

 

Depending on where exactly you draw the line, most of what we humans do and enjoy could be considered a ritual. Seems to be a pretty normal human thing to me.

 

And another thing, thus, that got stained well when morontheism laid its sticky hands on it.

 

 

 

 

 

Reminds me of an interesting idea on rituals and religion that I found in one pen&paper rpg sourcebook. A land where there are gods... sadly... because those gods are every bit as fucking insane as H. P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods. Yet there are people living in the land of those mad deities... and they adapted rather well to life in this nightmare. One of the main differences between them and "normal" people everywhere else is that they not only do not have any religious rituals... no, they actively avoid creating any accidental ones. The book says roughly "Rituals are a way to attract Divine attention by a prescribed routine of words and actions. Madlanders avoid them like the plague". So when, for example, a Madlander dies the community takes care to never perform the burial in the exact same way of any past burial anyone of them remembers; they always change something, no matter how small, so that the brainfucked gods of their place don't take note and drop in for a disastrous visit. Most of the time it works.

 

Kind of changes perspective on the entire ritual thing if you ask me.

[Deidre]

Rituals, like traditions, can bring comfort. When we left Christianity, some of that familiar comfort went away. This means we need to make our own new traditions and/or rituals. Humans do enjoy traditions but I only want them to be built on reality, not rituals based on fear and nonsense. Good topic, definitely is something we all think about or have thought about to some degree.

[Gamecock1973]

I think humans are wired for rituals and we will create them with or without religion.  When I was a child, my father got paid every other Friday and we would go out to dinner (we only ate out twice a month!) and go grocery shopping on those Friday nights.  I am a teacher and my college students almost universally sit in the same seat where they sat on the first day of the term.  My friends come over to watch 'Game of Thrones' at my house every Monday night (We're ahead of y'all here in China).  I ALWAYS eat all my french fries (2 ketchup packets!) before touching my burger at McDonald's because I don't want to eat them soggy.  In fact, I almost always order the same entree at all my favorite restaurants.  Deidre is right...it is about comfort and being in a comfort zone.

 

Religion just jumps on this elementary part of human nature, claims it for itself, and makes people wonder how it is possible to live without ritual.  Duh, you're not missing anything, and you still have ritual in your life, for sure.  If you want to create new traditions, that's fine.  But most traditions and rituals don't really have much meaning when you think about them.  Just a way to be comfortable and enjoy your life.  Although I will confess, sex on Sunday mornings has become a fine way to replace worship services!!!

[Vigile]

I don't get the draw to ritual in the classic sense of the word.  I don't believe I'm wired for it if that's the case.  I do enjoy going to the banya (Russian bathhouse) with my friends, which is kind of a ritual.  Likewise, sharing a bottle of wine and similar rituals.  But incense and latin phrases?  That's just lame IMO. 

[Guest MadameX]

Bill, you may enjoy hearing interviews with this fellow, or reading his work:

 

 

The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane Paperback

by Matthew Hutson

 

 

The author argues that it is a basic human characteristic to be non-rational and indulgence in ritual is one of those ways. There are great examples, for instance of baseball players who frequently have particular repetitive behaviors, such as swinging the bat a few times, scuffing the dirt, etc, that help to focus him, give him a little more confidence, calm his nerves.

 

Religion is both beliefs and practices, and not all are bad.

[Voice]

Ritual is an important part of every culture.  Just the other day I was telling someone about a ritual I saw in a documentary among an aborigine tribe, the tribe of the alligator.  A young man would volunteer for the rite of passage at which time the men of the tribe would stab him up and down the back with knives, simulating the teeth marks of an alligator.  If he survived he would possess the power of the alligator.

 

Circumcision is a ritual practiced by most African tribes/communities.

 

We can pursue softer rituals if we like.  I would encourage you to look at rituals around the world and decide what best suits you.  If you don't find anything you can always fall back on things like the daily rituals of having a morning cup of coffee, smoking up, or having a beer at a regular time.

[Vigile]

I think I'd be careful before I put too much weight on mankind's 'need' for ritual.  Undoubtedly, ritual is common, but I'm willing to bet that much of it is attributed to the fact that we are also prone to false pattern recognition.  As pattern-seeking animals, we see patterns that don't exist all the time.  It's a flaw in the way our brains operate -- a flaw that generally serves us well as it keeps us alive longer making us paranoid as opposed to curious (curiosity kills the cat and all).  Even so, when we see a pattern, we think it's correlated with the ritual.  Thus, why baseball players have lucky shirts, why aborigines danced for rain and why the Catholic church burns incense.  I'd hypothesize that any positives we get out of these tribal gestures are inconsequential. 

[Voice]

Birthday parties are rituals.  Make a practice of tending people's birthday parties.  

[Ellinas]

Hmm...

 

I suspect there are two issue here that need to be teased out.

 

Firstly, what do we identify as ritual?  Secondly, is there a general innate need for whatever we identify?

 

We can, indeed, cast the net widely in defining ritual behaviour.  Ostensibly, I am acting in a ritualistic fashion every time I check the window and door locks in a certain order before going to bed.  But I doubt if this really helps us.  Repetitive behaviour is habit; habit is a sort of ritual; but to say "we all have habits" does not really tell us anything in terms of narrowing the field to decide whether we need rituals of the sort encountered in Christianity in our existence.

 

So, perhaps better to concentrate on acts (whether communal or individual) that aim for either contact with the divine or a sense of social inclusion (and, in reality, those two would usually go together, but as we're talking about what Christianity offered, lets keep the term "divine" in there).

 

Such acts would include the various forms of eucharist or "breaking of bread", a prayer meeting, or even a private observance, as that can still give the sense of union with or belonging to a group of others who believe or do the same.

 

So, is there an innate need for such ritual?

 

Some believe so.  I quote from Anton Szandor LaVey's "The Satanic Bible" (the rather peculiar punctuation is as in the text I've copied):

 

"If man insists on externalizing his true self in the form of "God," then why fear his true self, in fearing "God," --why praise his true self in praising "God," --why remain externalized from "God" IN ORDER TO ENGAGE IN RITUAL AND RELIGIOUS CEREMONY IN HIS NAME?

Man needs ritual and dogma, but no law states that an externalized god is necessary in order to engage in ritual and ceremony performed in a god's name!

...

If he accepts himself, but recognizes that ritual and ceremony are the important devices that his invented religions have utilized to sustain his faith in a lie, then it is the SAME FORM OF RITUAL that will sustain his faith in the truth - the primitive pageantry that will give his awareness of his own majestic being added substance."

 

On the other hand, others, myself included, have become increasingly disillusioned with ritual of this sort.  There was a time, after leaving the Christian framework of belief, that I attempted to incorporate some level of pagan ritual practice.  However, over the years I've come to regard it as unnecessary and a hindrance - and I have come into contact with others who have gone the same direction.

 

The bottom line, it seems to me, is that ritual behaviour is symbolic behaviour.  Symbols, being symbolic, actually have only as much or as little meaning as the person using them gives to them.  To hanker after a ritual means you still invest it with some meaning for yourself - even if that meaning has become purely nostalgic rather than religious.  To LaVey (apparently) it was the symbolism of the triumph of the human over the mythological and the fulfillment of, at least his, psychological need to have some such symbol to cling to.  However, see the symbols as meaningless and the rituals become superfluous.

 

On the other hand, there is a finite possibility that I might be talking utter nonsense...

[florduh]

Rituals and rites of passage seem to be universal needs. Religion fills these needs rather well, but so do other organizations and even family traditions may perform that function. If you like costumes and mumbo jumbo, there are always pseudo secret societies such as the Masons or the somewhat less goofy service organizations and brotherhoods such as Elks, Eagles and Oddfellows. Even a biker gang fills the need or desire for ritual, community, pageantry and fraternity. Religion is just the most common place to find ritual and tradition.

[Voice]

florduh, you're a wise and informed man.

[RipVanWinkle]

"and about praying, why bother praying to ask something?

all knowing all powerful god can be changed by a pray?????"

 

I agree, with respect to praying for that kind of purpose. But praying as a method of catharsis is entirely different.  bill

[Deva]

I want to go to one Buddhist ritual a year. I am not one for ritual everyday, that tends to diminish its value.

[Ravenstar]

I welcome the seasons in a pagan sort of way… also attend a 'drumming down the sun' ritual on midsummers eve at a local beach. Thanksgiving dinner is a ritual (tradition) in my family. So many ways to do it without mumbo jumbo.

[midniterider]

The military loves rituals. The end of day Retreat ritual, saluting the flag while a fighter jet does a flyby and the national anthem plays was pretty cool. Also military parade was an interesting ritual. Twenty one gun salutes at funerals. Folding the flag in a special way.

 

Civilians love rituals. Stand, place hand over heart, face the flag and sing the national anthem at a ballgame.

 

People love symbolism.

 

People love regimentation. It gives them a sense of security and fulfillment. Ritual and ceremony provide that. First time I saw a Catholic mass was interesting.

 

What person dies and is just buried without a ceremony?

 

Ritual speaks to our emotional side.

[amateur]

The only thing I really miss regarding xianity are the rituals surrounding holidays, for me just xmas and easter.  I have no issue with keeping rituals and traditions like holiday cookies and chocolate!  But those days have no more special meaning for me now, which is fine, but I do have very happy childhood memories.  My family wasn't religious, but we definitely had our rituals with those days.  My mom was an awesome baker!  And the midnight candlelight service when I was a little kid was cool!  I enjoyed doing the fun things with my kids, too, when they were little.  Those are just very happy memories for me -- more to do with my parents when I was a kid, and with my kids when I was the adult, but when I was a young teenager who was taking religion more seriously I did enjoy those holidays on a religious level, too.

 

I do miss those days, because I do have those happy memories, and with my parents both dead, and my children grown, those days are gone.  I'm not someone who's going to decorate my house and put up a tree if there aren't going to be kids coming around.  And I dislike buying presents for adults (not meaning my kids, but I won't buy presents for co-workers, etc).   

 

But life goes on, and it's important to make new rituals.  A summer cookout with friends, a party around the winter holidays or Halloween with friends -- those can become happy traditions with certain rituals, too.

 

I truly don't miss Sunday mornings of getting up early, dressing nice, going to church with the sitting/standing stuff (I always get real dizzy when I stand up quick after sitting because of a heart condition, so that was never fun for me), then getting home, changing clothes (I'm as obnoxious as a little kid about not wanting to change clothes multiple times in a day!), being hungry for lunch, and realizing half of Sunday was gone (or at least the nice morning part) and I'd always be so tired after being up early.  I actually didn't like that, and how I'd feel.

 

I have to agree with Gamecock, sleeping in and having Sunday morning sex and a relaxed breakfast is a wonderful alternative!

[FreeThinkerNZ]

Circumcision is a ritual practiced by most African tribes/communities.

I didn't know that, I thought it was restricted to Abrahamic religions, caused by a desire to exert sexual control.  Why do the African tribes/communities do it?

 

 

"and about praying, why bother praying to ask something?

all knowing all powerful god can be changed by a pray?????"

 

I agree, with respect to praying for that kind of purpose. But praying as a method of catharsis is entirely different.  bill

 

If it works for you, fine.  But isn't it just a form of meditation/self talk?